As I did with my first Worthy Reads and Worthless Reads post, I’m rating eight recent reads on a five-point scale based upon the following three categories:
IDEATION – helps me generate new ideas
INTELLECTION – gives me a new perspective on a business topic
MAXIMIZE – increases my current understanding of a business topic
I am also including my Dog-Ear Score for each read. For those needing a primer on the Brand Autopsy Dog-Ear Scoring System, click here.
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It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be (Paul Arden)
For those working in a creative field, especially advertising and marketing, this book will inspire you to be more passionate, teach you to be more responsive to clients, and inform you to be smarter. It’s a small book with big impact.
IDEATION – 4/5
INTELLECTION – 4/5
MAXIMIZE – 4/5
Dog-Ear Score – 9.5% (12:127)
WORTHY READ
How to Make Big Money in your Small Business (Jeffrey J. Fox)
I’ve come to expect simplistic brilliance from Fox’s books. Because he has set the bar so high with his other books (notably, Don’t Send a Resume, How to Become a Great Boss, and How to Become a Marketing Superstar), my expectations are lofty … unrealistically lofty. Fox doles out easy to understand advice for how to get the most out of a small business -- making this a good book, but not a great book. Then again, my expectations may be unrealistically high.
IDEATION – 4/5
INTELLECTION – 3/5
MAXIMIZE – 3/5
Dog-Ear Score – 14.0% (21:150)
WORTHY READ
UNSTUCK: A Tool for Yourself, Your Team, and Your World (Keith Yamashita & Sandra Spataro)
I am an evangelist for this book. It is the most engaging and most useful book to dislodge a team of many or a team of one to overcome challenges in work and in life. The advice given in this book for how to improve teamwork, facilitate consensus and to inspire action is priceless. You don’t read this book … you use this book. (The design alone of the book merits buying it.)
IDEATION – 5/5
INTELLECTION – 5/5
MAXIMIZE – 5/5
Dog-Ear Score – N/A
WAY WORTHY READ
Free Prize Inside (Seth Godin)
We’ve given Seth lots of positive digital ink for this book. Here's the link to our Free Prize Inside digital ink.
IDEATION – 5/5
INTELLECTION – 5/5
MAXIMIZE – 5/5
Dog-Ear Score – 18.0% (43:239)
WAY WORTHY READ
Art of Innovation (Tom Kelley)
Brand Examiner Paul evangelized this book to me. Paul digs ideating, brainstorming, PEZ Candy, and he digs this book. IDEO is a creative hothouse having designed thousands of breakthrough products from the first Apple mouse to Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera to the Palm Pilot V and to Crest's Neat Squeeze standup toothpaste tube. However, for all IDEO’s talk about how they brainstorm and prototype their way to creating breakthrough designs and products, there is nothing innovative in the design of their book. It looks and reads like every other business book. Shouldn’t a book written by the world’s leading design consultancy specializing in product development and innovation deliver a book that improves the reading experience? Big miss. Nevertheless, the book’s content on how to develop whiz-bang ideas and how to foster a company culture that thrives on innovation makes it a worthy read.
IDEATION – 4/5
INTELLECTION – 4/5
MAXIMIZE – 3/5
Dog-Ear Score – 12.8% (38:297)
WORTHY READ
Ideas Are Free (Alan Robinson & Dean Schroeder)
This is the quintessential book on how to foster and leverage free ideas from employees. It’s a must read for any project manager responsible for delivering programs designed to increase sales, increase productivity, increase customer satisfaction, and increase company employee morale. Read it today. Use it tomorrow. This book truly deserves my 22.5% Dog-Ear Score.
IDEATION – 4/5
INTELLECTION – 5/5
MAXIMIZE – 5/5
Dog-Ear Score – 22.5% (49:218)
WORTHY READ
The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation (Ronald Alsop)
This book gave me a great “A-Ha” moment when I began to think of brand management as reputation management. Let’s face it, branding is a nebulous term that not everyone fully understands, including marketers. However, everyone understands the term ‘reputation’ and all the emotional and rational feelings associated with a solid reputation and with a tarnished reputation. Alsop gives sound advice on how to manage, measure, and nurture the reputation of a corporation. A worthy read for anyone working for a Fortune 500 company or for an up-and-coming Fortune 500 company. (For a more complete review, click here.)
IDEATION – 3/5
INTELLECTION – 4/5
MAXIMIZE – 5/5
Dog-Ear Score – 10.8% (31:286)
WORTHY READ
Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow (Larry Greiner)
(Harvard Business Review article #98308)
This vintage HBR article (first published in 1972) is still highly relevant today. Greiner proposes that companies experience organizational growth through evolution phases and revolution phases. Evolutionary phases are prolonged periods of time where no major changes take place in organizational structure. Revolutionary phases are periods that follow evolutionary growth where substantial turmoil in organizational structure exists. Greiner also advises how management, through understanding its organizational history, can better prepare for future developmental crises.
IDEATION – 3/5
INTELLECTION – 5/5
MAXIMIZE – 5/5
Dog-Ear Score – N/A
WORTHY READ
Thanks, John! This really gives me insight into books that have caught my attention but that I haven't investigated yet. So many of us bloggers are huge readers and you set a terrific example for all of us to follow, in sharing our reviews of what we read. Keep the dog-ear score comin'!
Posted by: Michele Miller | May 28, 2004 at 10:49 AM
Yeah, I was wondering about Unstuck, I've considering giving it a read for a while now. I'm in NY in two weeks, and will pick it up if I can find it there (I haven't seen it in any local bookstores this side of the planet). I'll let you know my dog-ear score whn I do, BTW, you should get someone to code you a really simple dog-eat score calculator that sits on your site...!
Posted by: Rich...! | June 01, 2004 at 02:35 PM